Envisat Celebrates 5th Anniversary

The European environmental satellite Envisat was launched from Kourou, French Guiana on February 28, 2002 atop an Ariane 5. At launch it weighed over 8 tons and was put into a sun synchronous orbit of 800 kilometers.
Its mission is to monitor especially the ocean and costal areas, but also include the monitoring of land and atmosphere. The goal is to provide scientist with information to deliver an accurate global picture.

Up to date the satellite has orbited the earth more than 26,000 times and travelled a distance more than 1,000,000,000 kilometers. But not only the extra-terrestrial part is impressive: the satellite delivers every day about 280 Gigabytes of data, or about 500 Terabytes to date, that needs to be saved and analyzed.

Despite reaching its nominal lifetime of 5 years, the ESA Member States have decided to extend mission operations until 2010.

For further information about Envisat, visit ESA’s dedicated Envisat page.